The subject matter herein relates generally to electrical connectors that have ground bus bars that electrically common ground contacts.
Typically, high speed electrical connector systems experience significant electrical interference, such as cross-talk and resonant frequency noise, within the mating or interface zone where two electrical connectors electrically engage each other. For example, within the mating zone, high speed connectors may exhibit resonance spikes, which degrade signal transmission performance of the connectors. To improve performance by reducing the electrical interference in the mating zone, some known electrical connectors include ground tie bars that are in or at least close to the mating zone. The ground tie bars are configured to electrically connect grounding elements, such as ground contacts, which reduces resonance spikes across the mating zone and increases the resonant frequency to values above the range that signals are transmitted across the mating zone.
The ground tie bars typically are located on a plug connector to mechanically engage plug ground contacts and/or on a mating receptacle connector to mechanically engage receptacle ground contacts. However, adding additional components that interface with the ground contacts of the plug and/or receptacle connectors often complicates efforts to control the alignment between the plug and receptacle contacts as well as the normal forces exerted between the contacts during mating. For example, the receptacle ground contacts may be beam contacts configured to deflect outward a specified degree upon engaging corresponding plug ground contacts, but a ground tie bar housed on the receptacle outward of the receptacle contacts may exert an inward force on the receptacle contacts upon engaging the receptacle contacts. Thus, the deflectable beam contacts experience opposing forces from the mating plug contacts and the ground tie bar, and the compounding of normal forces could misalign the plug and receptacle ground contacts and detrimentally affect the electrical performance of the connector system. It may be complicated and difficult to design the receptacle and/or plug of a connector system to control the alignment and normal forces at the mating interface when a secondary contact of the ground tie bar is configured to ride on a primary receptacle contact that in turn engages a primary plug contact. Furthermore, some connector systems include a ground tie bar assembled into the plug connector instead of the receptacle, such that contacts of the ground tie bar engage corresponding plug ground contacts. However, the plug ground contacts may be stationary and non-deflectable, so the non-separable interface between the plug ground contacts and the ground tie bar may suffer from corrosion and debris. In addition, the contact point at the interface between the ground tie bar and the plug ground contact may be farther away from the mating interface between the plug contacts and the receptacle contacts than desirable, which limits the reduction of electrical interference across the mating zone.
A need remains for electrically commoning ground contacts in the mating zone to reduce electrical interference that avoids the problems of known ground tie bars in connector systems identified above.